Category: PDFs

PDF #39 – Peace Corps TEFL TESL Teaching English as a Foreign or Second

Teaching English as a Foreign Language- TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language is for Volunteers who are currently teaching or who are about to teach English. It is a practical guide for the classroom teacher.

The manual describes procedures and offers sample exercises and activities for a wide range of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, whole-class, small-group, and individual participation, classroom testing and preparing students for national examinations.

It covers a great variety of teaching situations, primary and secondary schools and college, the office or workplace, school and work settings which have limited facilities for instruction and those which provide ample support, any geographical or cultural setting where Peace Corps Volunteers may be found.

Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) refers to teaching the English language to students with different first languages, typically used to imply that the English Language Learner may have already learned more than one language, prior to learning English. TEFL can occur either within the state school system or more privately, at a language school or with a tutor.

TEFL can also take place in an English-speaking country for people who have immigrated there (either temporarily for school or work, or permanently). TEFL teachers may be native or non-native speakers of English. Other acronyms are TESL (teaching English as a second language), TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages), and ESL (English as a second language, a term typically used in English-speaking countries, and more often referring to the learning than the teaching).

Students who are learning English as a second language are known as ESL (English as a second language) or EFL (English as a foreign language) students. More generally, these students are referred to as ELL (English language learner) students. Some of these terms are not in widespread use outside of the materials of providers of various programs and materials.

After reading “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #38 – Esayas Teshome Taddese – The Practice of Teaching Speaking Skills the case of three Secondary Schools in Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia

Teaching Speaking Skills – The primary purpose of this study was to explore the practice of teaching speaking skill in selected secondary schools in Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, the research used descriptive survey research design.The participantsof the study consist of 11 (9 male, 2 female) secondary school teachers and 272 grade 9 students.

Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation were the data collection tools. The data analysis, interpretation and discussion of the findings indicated the practice of teaching speaking skill depends on few interactive activities named group discussion; brainstorming and pair work with little follow up discussion on the side of the teachers.

The balance between the accuracy and fluency aspect of speaking skills lacks equilibrium with more emphasis placed on accuracy practice. The factors that challenge the practice of teaching speaking skill include large class size, use of mother tongue during discussions, inhibition and fear of making mistake on the side of the students and shortage of practice time.

After reading “Teaching Speaking Skills” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #37 – Jack C Richard and Theodore S Rodgers – Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching is designed to provide a detailed account of major twentieth-century trends in language teaching. To highlight the similarities and differences between approaches and methods. This model is presented in Chapter 2 and is used in subsequent chapters. It describes approaches and methods according to their underlying theories of language and language learning; the learning objectives; the syllabus model used; the roles of teachers, learners, and materials within the method or approach; and the classroom procedures and techniques that the method uses.

This new edition is an extensive revision of the first edition of this successful text. Like the first edition, it surveys the major approaches and methods in language teaching, such as grammar translation, audiolingualism, communicative language teaching, and the natural approach. This edition includes new chapters on topics such as whole language, multiple intelligences, neurolinguistic programming, competency-based language teaching, cooperative language learning, content-based instruction, task-based language teaching, and the Post-Methods Era. Teachers and teachers-in-training will discover that this second edition is a comprehensive survey and analysis of the major and minor teaching methods used around the world.

Teaching a foreign language can be a challenging but rewarding job that opens up entirely new paths of communication to students. It’s beneficial for teachers to have knowledge of the many different language learning techniques including ESL teaching methods so they can be flexible in their instruction methods, adapting them when needed.

Keep on reading for all the details you need to know about the most popular foreign language teaching methods. Some of the ones covered are the communicative approach, total physical response, the direct method, task-based language learning, sugguestopedia, grammar-translation, the audio-lingual approach and more.

After reading “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #36 – Debusmann, Ralph – An Introduction to Dependency Grammar

Many linguists consider Dependency Grammar (DG) to be inferior to established phrase structure based theories like GB (Chomsky 1986), LFG (Kaplan & Bresnan 1982) and HPSG (Pollard & Sag 1994). The aim of this article is to remedy this state of affairs by seeking to make those unconvinced of DG perceive the benefits it offers. To this end, section 2 makes the reader acquainted with the basic concepts of DG, before section 3 sets the theory against phrase structure based theories, arguing that it has considerable advantages in the analysis of languages with relatively free word order (e.g. German, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Russian). Section 4 describes
Duchier’s (1999) DG axiomatization as a prototypical example of a DG that separates dependencies and surface order. Thereafter, section 5 proceeds with an overview of current Dependency Grammar formalisms and section 6 rounds the paper up.

Modern Dependency Grammar has been created by the French linguist Lucien Tesniere (1959), but as Covington (1990) argues, DG has already been used by traditional grammarians since the Middle Ages. The observation which drives DG is a simple one: In a sentence, all but one word depend on other words. The one word that does not depend on any other is called the root of the sentence.

I think an introduction to Dependency Grammar has an undeniable advantages for describing languages with a higher degree of word order variation than English. But these advantages can only crop up if one lifts the constraint of projectivity and treats surface order separately from dependency. An argument by Rambow & Joshi (1994), stating that no well-behaved parsers for such DGs exist and that for this reason, non-projective DGs are hampered, can be turned down by mentioning recent advances (e.g. Bröker 1998, Duchier 1999, Jarvinen & Tapanainen 1997) alone.

You can find more PDFs on other important ESL subjects in the the PDF section of this website.

PDF #35 – Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov – Review – Second Language Teaching and Learning in the Net Generation

In the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), the term “Net Generation” has been clearly defined by Prensky (2001), who states that Net Generation members are “digital natives” since they “[have] spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (p. 1), all of which make them different from the baby boomer generation.

For those who are eager to learn more about the language learning needs and necessities of the Net Generation, the edited book by Oxford and Oxford (2009), entitled Second Language Teaching and Learning in the Net Generation is a must-read resource. Since most of the contributors to the book are second and foreign language instructors as well as researchers, almost every chapter of the book describes empirical studies involving different innovative technologies and state-of-the-art tools, offering pedagogical ideas, effective strategies, and useful suggestions on how these technologies could be applied to enhance language teaching and learning.

Surprisingly, however, while the book emphasizes the use of technology in foreign and second language learning, only two chapters include images of the types of technology described (Wimba voice chat, and discussion board; video-based conferencing software Waveasy). For readers who have only recently started integrating and using technology, the inclusion of images could help see or imagine the mentioned technology and/or tools as students engage in activities. Additionally, URL addresses of software and programs (e.g., SL; university-based learner-friendly blogs) have not been provided either, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, for educators to use these resources and techniques in different classroom settings. Currently, interested readers will have to find information about the mentioned software or the website URLs themselves. Although techies (those who are technologically savvy) might be familiar with most of the resources and websites provided in the chapters, for both tech-aficionados and tech-novices, the absence of URLs could be a slight inconvenience.

After reading “Second Language Teaching and Learning” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #34 – Zhou Li-na – Loan Words in Modern English and Their Features 

Loan Words is a term adopted from a source language and incorporated into a recipient language without translation. With rapid process of globalization, interconnections among countries in areas of economics, politics, culture, science, and technology get strengthened.

As a result of this, English, as the world language, has borrowed a large number of words from foreign languages like French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese Japanese, Greek, Spanish, Arabian, etc. According to surveys, the percentage of modern English words derived from each language is 29% from French, 29% from Latin, 26% from German, and 6% from Greek, the rest accounting for 6%. This paper probes into loan words in modern English with the aim to facilitate English learning in EFL (English as a Foreign Language).

A deeper understanding on loan words?

A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or loan translation), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language.

Examples of loanwords in the English language include café (from French café, which literally means “coffee”), bazaar (from Persian bāzār, which means “market”), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten, which literally means “children’s garden”).

The word calque is a loanword from the French noun calque (“tracing; imitation; close copy”); while the word loanword and the phrase loan translation are calques of the German nouns Lehnwort and Lehnübersetzung.

Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings.

Strictly speaking, the term loanword conflicts with the ordinary meaning of loan in that something is taken from the donor language without it being something that is possible to return.

The terms substrate and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition or language replacement events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language (the superstrate)

Loan Words in Modern English

English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century A.D. and continued strongly well after the Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language.

It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they have always adopted loanwords from the languages of whatever cultures they have come in contact with. There have been few periods when borrowing became unfashionable, and there has never been a national academy in Britain, the U.S., or other English-speaking countries to attempt to restrict new loanwords, as there has been in many continental European countries.

After reading “Loan Words in Modern English” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

PDF #33 -Heike Behrens – Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquistion

It was long considered to be impossible to learn grammar based on linguistic experience alone. In the past decade, however, advances in usage-based linguistic theory, computational linguistics, and developmental psychology changed the view on this matter.

So-called usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition state that language can be learned from language use itself, by means of social skills like joint attention, and by means of powerful generalization mechanisms. This paper first summarizes the assumptions regarding the nature of linguistic representations and processing.

Usage-based theories are nonmodular and nonreductionist, i.e., they emphasize the form-function relationships, and deal with all of language, not just selected levels of representations. Furthermore, storage and processing is considered to be analytic as well as holistic, such that there is a continuum between children’s unanalyzed chunks and abstract units found in adult language.

In the second part, the empirical evidence is reviewed. Children’s linguistic competence is shown to be limited initially, and it is demonstrated how children can generalize knowledge based on direct and indirect positive evidence. It is argued that with these general learning mechanisms, the usage-based paradigm can be extended to multilingual language situations and to language acquisition under special circumstances.

What is the exact form and content of the uniquely human capacity to learn language? There must be a genetic component in this capacity because every normally developing child is able to learn language, and there must be an environmental component because no one is born with a specific language.

After reading this article, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF # 32 – Piet Van de Craen, Katrien Mondt, Laure Allain and
Ying Gao, Why and How CLIL Works. An Outline for CLIL Theory

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a powerful and empowering way to learn languages. At the same time the approach is in line with European language policies on the promotion and implementation of multilingualism (Commission 2005; High Level Group 2007). As a result, most CLIL research is policy-driven research.

While we do not want to question this,  it is equally legitimate to look at CLIL from a completely different point of view, namely to consider CLIL as an innovative approach to language pedagogical practices in line with modern research about language learning and teaching as well as motivational aspects, cognitive development and learning and the brain. In this paper, an intricate approach towards CLIL is put forward, which – at the same time – is presented as a research paradigm for the future.

General aims of CLIL

Maljers et al. (2007) present an overview of European CLIL practices by having authors from twenty countries reflect on CLIL practices in their respective countries. One question presented to the authors was “Describe the aims of CLIL”. It is striking to see that most authors consider as the primary aims of CLIL teaching and learning: (i) the promotion of linguistic diversity; (ii) promoting language learning; (iii) increasing the learner’s proficiency; and (iv) internationalization. These are, of course, important goals but it seems to us that CLIL opens much more opportunities for learning than were hitherto put forward.

After reading “Content and Language Integrated Learning” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #31 – Ewa Dabrowska – Words as Constructions

The average English speaker with secondary school education knows about 60,000 words; many speakers know 100,000 words or more (Miller 1996). ‘Knowing a word’ involves knowing a variety of things: its phonological form, grammatical properties, meaning, and, for some words at least, the social contexts and genres in which it is normally used (e.g. the word horsy is used primarily in informal spoken language, while equestrian is much more formal).

It is also a matter of degree: a person may have only passive knowledge of a particular word, i.e. be able to recognize it but not produce it, or have only a rough idea of its meaning: for example, one might know that trudge is a verb of motion without being aware what specific kind of motion it designates. At the other extreme, many speakers have very detailed representations which enable them to distinguish trudge from near-synonyms such as plod, yomp, and lumber.

How is such knowledge acquired? To answer this question, it will be useful to make a distinction between ‘basic’ and ‘non-basic’ vocabulary. By ‘basic vocabulary’ I mean words designating relatively concrete entities which are learned early in development in the context of face-to-face interaction, where the extralinguistic context offers a rich source of information about meaning.

After reading “Words as Constructions” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

 

PDF #30 – Croft – Beyond Aristotle

Aarts (2004) argues that the best way to model grammatical categories is a compromise preserving Aristotelian form classes with sharp boundaries on the one hand, and allowing gradience in terms of the number of syntactic properties that a category member possesses on the other.

But the assumption of form classes causes serious theoretical and empirical problems. Constructions differ in their distributional patterns, but no a priori principles exist to decide which constructions should be used to define form classes.

Grammatical categories must be defined relative to specific constructions; this is the position advocated in Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001). Constructionally defined categories may have sharp boundaries, but they do not divide words into form classes.

Nevertheless, the most important traditional intuitions for parts of speech (Aarts’ chief examples) are reinterpretable in terms of crosslinguistic universals that constrain distributional variation but do not impose Aristotelian form classes, gradable or not, on the grammars of particular languages.

What is the nature of grammatical categories? The answers to this question have mirrored the answers to the more general question of categorization. For many centuries, the answer has been the Aristotelian one: categories have sharp boundaries, and are defined by individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. In the last century, however, a new approach arose, partly based on philosophical considerations, partly on the basis of psychological experiments.

In these experiments, gradient category behavior is consistently observed. This model goes under the name of ‘prototype theory’. But the theoretical interpretation of gradient category behavior has been a matter of controversy. A common view is to take it as denying the existence of sharp boundaries.

Aarts (2004; henceforth MLG) proposes a model of grammatical categories that includes both gradience and Aristotelian grammatical categories with
sharp boundaries.

After reading “Beyond Aristotle” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.